News: Google Will Announce Duplicate Content Issues To Webmasters

I have written extensively about how to avoid penalties by Google a.k.a. The Google Filter,  but if you haven’t been paying attention you’re in luck. Google has recently announced that they will now notify webmasters when they have made a cross-domain URL decision involving your site.

What this means is that when similar or duplicate content is present across more than one domain, Google will choose one of the URLs to index. When this cross-domain URL decision is made, some of your content may not be getting indexed in favor of another URL. The decision is typically made in favor of the more “important” domain. (It’s more important than ever now to get your social media content game on!)

While there are multiple reasons for there to be duplicate information on more than one site, it’s never good when you’re on the losing end of the deal. This is why Google has decided to send you a notification when they need to make this decision. That’s cool right? At least we know and can make some sort of movement to make the changes necessary if we end up with the short end of the stick.

Currently, Google only sends the notification to you within Webmaster Tools. Which you will find in the admin section of your Google account. Remember that if you have Gmail, Adwords, Analytics, or some other Google product that you automatically have a Google account. So, be sure your site is claimed within Webmaster Tools and have it set up to send you an email regarding all new notifications that come in.